of persons transported to the American colonies, under sentence from the courts, at about two thousand; and, taking into consideration their habits, he was of opinion, half a century ago, that their descendants did not probably exceed the original stock.  I do not know where Mr. Jefferson obtained his data for this estimate, but he did not show his ordinary acuteness in ascribing the reason why the convicts left few or no issue.  Women were by far too much in request in America, during the first century or two of its political existence, to admit of the probability of men so openly stamped with infamy from obtaining wives, and I think there existed a physical inability for the propagation of the stock, since very few women were transported at any time.  Within the last few months, two instances have occurred in the Chamber of Deputies, of members quoting the example of America, in enforcing their arguments in favour of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of criminals!

I had no intention of quoting any part of the controversy on finance, but, on reflection, it may serve a good purpose to give one or two extracts from the letter of Mr. Harris.  In order that this may be done fairly, both as it respects the point at issue and the parties concerned, it will be necessary to make a brief preliminary explanation.  M. Sauliner, the principal writer of the other side, had made it a charge against our system, that nearly all the public money was derived from the customs, which he assumed was a bad mode of obtaining revenue.  Let this be as it might, my answer, was, that, as between France and America, there was no essential variance of system, the only difference lying in the fact that the one got all the revenue it could in this manner, and that the other got all it wanted.  I added, a tax on exports excepted, that all the usual means of raising revenue known to other nations were available, at need, to the government of the United-States.  To this latter opinion Mr. Harris took exceptions, saying, in effect, that the administration of Mr. Adams, the father, had been broken down by resorting to excises, stamp-acts, and direct taxation; and that since his unfortunate experiment, no administration in America had dreamed, even in time of war, of resorting to a mode of obtaining revenue which was so offensive as to produce the revolution of 1776!  Of course Mr. Harris was reminded, that the stamp-act, of which the colonists complained, was repealed many years before the epoch of 1776; that the revolution proceeded from a denial of the right in parliament to tax the colonies at all, and not from any particular imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to, in the war of 1812, without overturning the administration of Mr. Madison, or weakening that of his successor.  But of what avail was a statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who appeared before Europe in the character of an American diplomate?  Mr. Harris enjoyed the double advantage of giving his testimony as one in the confidence of both the French and the American governments—­an advantage that a quotation from the statute-books themselves could not overcome.